Prof. ST Hsieh
Director, US-China Energy Industry Forum
626-376-7460
March 12, 2024
Latest news is that “Biden-Trump Clinch 2024 Nominations” as of March 12, 2024. Setting the stage for a grueling general election rematch that many voters do not want. Unfortunately, the general public does not have anyway out, we have to watch the election but how many will vote? Will anyone’s vote make any difference?
Both candidates will fight to the last minute with full force degrading the opponent and claim the nation, or even the world, will near the end beyond help if he is not elected. But it is absolutely due to his opponent’s weakness! Clearly, we will be bombarded with negative and stressful statements about everything going on. But how much is the truth?
The negative campaign will further split the already polarized nation/society. Aside from damaging the national morality, this campaign may cause serious impacts on the nation’s foundation: the constitution, the government, the separation of power…It is very difficult, based on the experience of January 6th, 2021, how Trump will accept the bad news on November 6th, 2024, the day after the general election.
For the rest of the world, fasten your seatbelt and watch the US democracy at work and learn the lesson well.
God bless America!
Yahoo News/YouGov poll: No State of the Union bump for Biden
The speech earned rave reviews from pundits — but so far, Americans don’t seem convinced by the president’s energetic new pitch.
Andrew Romano, National Correspondent
Tue, March 12, 2024 at 12:04 PM PDT
Pundits may have fawned over President Biden’s State of the Union address last Thursday, praising it as a “homerun” performance from a “fiery, powerful, vigorous guy” that would ease nagging fears about his age and vitality.
But voters barely seem to have noticed.
A new Yahoo News/YouGov survey of 1,482 U.S. adults, conducted in the days immediately following Biden’s big speech, shows zero improvement in perceptions of the president — or in his standing against former President Donald Trump.
Before the State of the Union, Trump (45%) and Biden (44%) were statistically tied in a head-to-head 2024 matchup, according to the previous Yahoo News/YouGov poll from late January.
They remain tied today, with Trump at 46% and Biden at 44% — a gap that’s well within the poll’s margin of error (2.8%).
Before the speech, 40% of Americans approved of the job Biden was doing as president; 56% disapproved. Today, those numbers are 39% and 55%, respectively.
The age issue
Biden would be 86 years old at the end of a second term, and voters have consistently said that they worry about his advanced age and ability to handle the job for another four years.
But far from moving the needle in Biden’s favor on the age issue, his State of the Union — a widely viewed and, by most accounts, energetic display — appears to have had no effect whatsoever:
- Just 29% of Americans now say Biden, 81, is fit to serve another term as president, unchanged from 29% in January.
- Most Americans (51%) still say Biden’s age is a “big problem” affecting his “fitness for the presidency,” also unchanged since January.
- Only 30% of Americans say Biden has been “mostly in charge” as president, while 53% say he’s been “mostly passive” — compared to 28% and 54%, respectively, when the question was last asked in November.
What’s holding Biden back here? It may be that the public has made up its mind about his age — or that he’ll need more than a single speech to shake things up.
Either way, last Thursday’s address wasn’t the reset the White House was hoping it would be. Just 17% of Americans who watched the State of the Union or followed news about it say Biden seemed “not as old” as they expected — while 51% say he seemed “about the same” as they expected and 24% say he seemed “older” than they expected.
Asked whether the speech made Biden seem more fit to be president or less fit to be president, just under a third of these same Americans (32%) say more fit. A slightly larger number say less fit (35%) — and most of the rest (28%) say the State of the Union did not alter their opinion of Biden’s fitness.
But what about Democrats?
Given the ever-increasing levels of polarization in U.S. politics, most of the positive reviews of Biden’s speech came from Democrats; Republicans were uniformly critical.
That raised the possibility of a polarized response in the polls as well — one that might see a helpful boost in Democratic enthusiasm even as backlash among Republicans prevented the president’s top-line numbers from changing much, if at all.
And even as Biden comes closer to mathematically clinching the Democratic nomination, doubts about his strength as a candidate don’t appear to be subsiding.
Agreement with what Biden said about specific issues, meanwhile, closely matches his corresponding issue approval ratings — including on inflation (38% agree, 48% disagree); immigration (37% agree, 50% disagree); the economy (42% agree, 47% disagree); and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (33% agree, 42% disagree). This suggests, again, that the speech itself did little to change views of Biden’s presidency.
President Joe Biden has won enough delegates to clinch the 2024 Democratic nomination
ZEKE MILLER, AP
Tue, March 12, 2024 at 4:17 PM PDT
Biden, who mounted his first bid for president 37 years ago, did not face any serious Democratic challengers to his run for reelection at age 81. That’s despite facing low approval ratings and a lack of voter enthusiasm for his presidency — driven in part by his age.
Just 38% of U.S. adults approve of how Biden is handling his job as president while 61% disapprove, according to a recent survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.